The summer movie season is here, and we're back to it being kicked off with a Marvel movie. The good old days of 2018 and 2019 where Infinity War and Endgame kicked off the summer feel like eons ago, especially with the current state of the MCU, but I am pleased to report that this was a pretty big win in my books. I had high hopes based on the cast and the promotional campaign, but the recent disappointments in the franchise had me still holding an ounce of hesitation. Thankfully this delivered the goods.
Thunderbolts* follows a bunch of characters that have never gotten the chance to lead their own movie. Yelena (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) are pitted against each other only to realize their employer Valentina (Julia Louis Dreyfus) is trying to tie up lose ends to avoid an impeachment. When they unleash something the world is not prepared for, they must team up with the Red Guardian (David Harbour) and newly appointed congressman Bucky (Sebastian Stan) to save the day.
The best part of this movie is no doubt the cast. Florence Pugh's character might not be a name brand superhero, but Pugh is such a talented performer that she carries this one very well. Her character is given a lot more depth than I had expected, and it makes this a film that is at times hilarious as expected, but also thematically strong as well. The rest of the main team is also given more emotional intrigue than they've been given in the past, and while none are as well rounded as Yelena, each performer brings a lot to their role. Russell and John-Kamen were especially fun to see on screen as both have felt almost forgotten since their prior appearances, and now they get some time to shine as the protagonists. Sebastian Stan is great as always but a bit under-utilized, and David Harbour is an absolute delight, but maybe the big standout for me was Lewis Pullman as Bob. I won't go in depth about who Bob actually is, but Lewis Pullman's performance was a delight, balancing an endearing feeling of innocence with some deep rooted struggle that I really connected with.
On the whole I was most impressed by the ideas that this film took on. It's a movie about a team of misfits coming together, nothing we haven't seen before, but at its core it's really a film about loneliness and the dark places we can go to when left to our own destructive thoughts. Yelena's loneliness is essentially the jumping point for the film's narrative, but the film dives into the loneliness of each character and winds up delivering a pretty fascinating depictions of struggling with mental health. As someone who has struggled with anxiety for a long time and gone to some dark places mentally because of it, I was shocked by how much I connected with these deeper ideas in the movie. I was expecting something fun and quirky along the lines of Guardians of the Galaxy, and this is a very fun and at times hilarious movie, but it really takes some big leaps that I appreciated a lot.
Looking at it as a Marvel movie, I was very pleased with the production on display. Marvel has been (rightfully) critiqued for an over reliance on unconvincing green screen, and poor VFX as a whole, so seeing this one clearly have physical sets and costumes just made everything feel a lot more tangible and authentic. There are plenty of moments that use CGI, but it isn't constantly relied upon or distracting like in some previous films. It isn't a perfect looking movie, but it feels much more like The Winter Solider than something recent like Brave New World.
I do wish there was a bit more going on in the whole of the movie. I loved the ideas it explored but we don't really have that much time with the actual team fighting together, partially because not too much happens. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's a much shorter movie than some of the MCU's efforts which at times works to its benefit, I just wish the story was fleshed out a little bit more. I really enjoyed this though, it's my favourite in the franchise in a long time, and feels like a return to form that we needed. Fantastic 4/5
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